DECISIVE EPISODES IN 
WESTERN HISTORY 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT IOWA CITY IOWA BEFORE THE 

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OP IOWA ON FEBRUARY 

TWENTY-FIRST NINETEEN HUNDRED FOURTEEN 



BY 

LAENAS G, 



WELD 



PUBLISHED AT IOWA CITY IOWA IN 1914 BY 
THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA 



1 



DECISIVE EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 



i 



DECISIVE EPISODES IN 
WESTERN HISTORY 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT IOWA CITY IOWA BEFORE THE 

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA ON FEBRUARY 

TWENTY-FIRST NINETEEN HUNDRED FOURTEEN 



BY 

LAENAS G. WELD 



PUBLISHED AT IOWA CITY IOWA IN 1914 BY 
THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA 






JUL 27 '914 



THE TORCH PRESS 

CEDAR RAPIDS 

IOWA 



DECISIVE EPISODES IN WESTERN 
HISTORY 

As you travel along some highway, turning 
aside to avoid this pitfall or that rock or some 
snag in your way, always watching your next 
footstep and taking only casual note of the trees, 
the buildings, or even the fields, groves, and hills 
as you pass them, it may suddenly occur to you to 
look back and see how far you have come and 
what the way is like. When behold! There is 
spread out before you a landscape beautiful, al- 
ways beautiful — for mere perspective is pleas- 
ing, regardless of its content. You see now the 
relation and extent of the groves and meadows 
and uplands passed, the quiltlike pattern of the 
fields, and the road itself along which you have 
traveled. But the pitfall, the rock, the snag 
which threatened to trip you, also the flowers 
which you plucked and threw aside, the spring at 
which you refreshed yourself — these details 
have disappeared, obscured by larger features of 



6 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

which you took no note in passing. It was a very 
ordinary country as you journeyed through it; 
but now, as you look back upon it, the a iew af- 
fords a prospect of singular interest and you only 
wish that the haze in which the landscape has be- 
come enveloped would lift a bit that you might 
see a little more clearly. 

And like unto this is History. In it we see the 
perspective of once current events and relations, 
which have drifted into the past, where all minor 
and merely personal incidents are obliterated; 
and over which tradition, in its quality of mercy, 
spreads the haze which softens down the hard 
lines and blends the inharmonious tints that ever 
mar the present. 

When the development of our Middle West 
shall, with the lapse of time, have assumed the 
proper perspective it will afford one of the most 
marvelous and thrilling chapters in history. We 
who are familiar with only its later and more 
complex phases have seen enacted a drama bolder 
than playwright has ever dared to conceive. The 
kinetoscopic process by which a wildei'ness has 
been transformed into a garden, an organized so- 
ciety evolved from the most heterogeneous ele- 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 7 

ments, a liberty-loving yet law-abiding people 
assembled out of the fugitives from European 
tyranny and oppression — this has no parallel in 
the annals of hmnan progress. 

In the later phases of this development the 
railway has been the pioneer. After feeling its 
way along the most fertile valleys and across the 
fairest stretches of prairie from one commercial 
vantage point to another, the railroad took up 
the task of transporting, not only the populations 
of whole districts, but also the very buildings for 
their habitation ; not only the materials and im- 
plements of agriculture, but also the products of 
agriculture and the proceeds yielded by these 
products in the eastern markets; took up the 
task, in fact, of earning the money to pay its div- 
idends, to redeem its bonds, to improve its road- 
bed and equipment and to carry its operations 
into new fields and push still farther west the 
borders of up-to-date civilization. Indeed, the 
study of the settlement of the West — beyond the 
Mississippi and, even more so, beyond the Mis- 
souri — is a study in transportation. 

But this rapid development has been the sequel 
to three centuries of preparation. Of these cen- 



8 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

turies the first two were, roughly speaking, de- 
voted to the solution of the purely geographical 
problems presented by the great interior wilder- 
ness of North America ; the third, to social and 
political establishment. 

No event had ever before so disturbed the 
world 's equilibrium as the discovery of America. 
As the extent and resources of the new continent 
gradually revealed themselves, the significance 
of the discovery became more and more appar- 
ent. Europeans were fairly staggered at the 
\vider outlook upon the world afforded by the 
voyages of Columbus, Yasco da Gama and Magel- 
lan — at finding themselves in such new and un- 
suspected relations to the planet upon which they 
lived. As the round globe revealed itself, the 
ancient mythical boundaries betwixt the known 
and the unknoAMi, with all their vague terrors, 
were swept away. To the peoples of EurojDe a 
vast field for adventurous exploitation was sud- 
denly thrown open. The future no longer lay 
before them upon the same dead level as the past. 
It loomed up before them, presenting practical 
problems of a new sort, problems for the solution 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 



of which they were little prepared, either by ex- 
perience or by their natural proclivities. 

Thus, while enthusiasm was high, progress was 
slow. Between Europe and the new continent 
lay a thousand leagues of ocean ; the navigation 
of which, though it had lost its mythical terrors, 
was still attended by real dangers of a very sub- 
stantial sort. The perilous passage made, the 
bold adventurers faced a continent for the most 
part inhospitable. Such welcome as they were 
occasionally accorded by the aboriginal inhab- 
itants was easily, and usually, turned to sullen 
suspicion. It was before the days of canned pro- 
visions and the many collapsible and portable 
contrivances which to-day make of such expedi- 
tions, relatively at least, mere ' ' outings' '. 

In the South the Spaniard looted and de- 
stroyed two civilizations in his lust for gold and 
was lured through vast wildernesses in the vain 
search for yet other Eldoradoes. In the North 
the Frenchman scoured still vaster territories in 
his equally rapacious, though less demoniacal, 
quest for furs. In the middle land, between the 
sub-tropic heat and the sub-arctic cold, the sturdy 



10 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

Englishman, while despising neither gold nor 
furs, grubbed a safer living from the soil. 

Spain Avas soon shorn of her prestige ; but her 
just and inevitable reward was long — too long 
— delayed. The record of her atrocities in the 
New World closed only as the waters of Havana 
Harbor closed over the Maine, Above the scenes 
enacted at Manila and at Santiago there may 
well have hovered the avenging angels of Monte- 
zuma and Atahualpa. But the career of Spain 
this side of the sea is of little concern to us, ex- 
cept that, through meddling with it, it has of late 
years bequeathed to us our full share of the 
"white man's burden" and ''the big brother's re- 
sponsibility". 

Not so with the rival careers of France and 
of England in America. From that rivalry, as 
it deepened into struggle and from struggle into 
the death grip, was developed American inde- 
pendence. We are familiar with the story. As 
school boys we learned it and dwelt upon its inci- 
dents with patriotic pride. But there are many 
features of the story as ordinarily told which, 
from our western point of view, need emphasiz- 
ing. Its perspective is quite diif erent as we see 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 11 

it from the shores of the Great Lakes or the 
banks of the Mississippi and as our cousins see 
it from the grand old State of Massachusetts. 

At this juncture I may be pardoned perhaps 
for alluding, at least briefly, to my subject. What 
we mean by ''Decisive Episodes" depends upon 
two things. First it depends upon our point of 
view, as I have already intimated. In any case 
the degree to which an incident may be regarded 
as decisive has no necessary relation to its mag- 
nitude. The decisive battles in the world's his- 
tory have not been those in which the largest 
armies contended or in which the slaughter was 
the most amazing. They are the battles by which 
the whole subsequent course of history has been 
determined. Thus, had Harold beaten off the 
Norman invader at Hastings we should have been 
a quite different people from what we are to-day, 
speaking a different language, living under dif- 
ferent laws, swayed by different ideals. Indeed, 
we should not have been. It was a decisive bat- 
tle, that at Hastings. 

Again our estimate of what is really decisive, 
as distinguished from that which is merely inci- 
dental, depends upon the extent to which we ad- 



12 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

mit fatalism into our philosophy of events. If 
we believe — as the fatalist does in effect — that 
the whole trend of things material and things 
spiritual depends upon the values of the con- 
stants in the equation of continuity as applied to 
the primordial nebula, then nothing can be de- 
cisive or even significant; for all is foreordained. 
If History is to mean anything to us we must, 
with Pope, assume that the Creator, 

"[While] binding Nature fast in Fate, 
Left free the human will." 

While the English were establishing them- 
selves at Jamestown the French founded Que- 
bec. At Jamestown was Captain John Smith; 
at Quebec w^as the equally purposeful Samuel 
Champlain. Each of these men is worthy to 
rank among the foremost of explorers. Each 
was in search of a passage through the American 
continent to the Pacific, little suspecting the vast 
stretches of forest and prairie, the desert wastes 
and the towering mountain ranges traversed by 
the overland route to that western sea. 

Just now we are concerned with Champlain. 
Scarcely had he occupied the commanding site 
of Quebec, when he determined to explore the un- 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 13 

known region to the south of the St. Lawrence. 
The military escort for such an enterprise could 
not be spared from the newly founded colony. 
Nothing daunted, however, Champlain accepted 
an invitation to join an Algonquin war party, 
which was setting out for a raid into the coimtry 
of the Iroquois in northern Kew York, and soon 
became their military champion. While on this 
expedition he discovered the lake which bears his 
name. It had been better for New France, and 
for France herself, had Champlain achieved noth- 
ing more signal than this. His Indian escort, 
however, had little interest in mere geographical 
discovery. They were out for scalps. 

Down at Jamestown the English colonists were 
loading a ship with ''fool's gold", while Smith, 
disgusted at their folly, was continuing his search 
for the passage to the South Sea ; and before that 
summer's leaves had fallen Henry Hudson was 
at the mouth of the Mohawk, scarce fifty miles 
from Lake Champlain, on the same quest. 

Upon the west shore of the lake, at Ticonder- 
oga, the enemy was encountered one evening in 
force. The invaders kept to their canoes all 
night, a bow-shot off shore, while the Iroquois in- 



14 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

trenched themselves behind a hastily constructed 
stockade. On the next day, the thirtieth of July, 
1609, round this primitive defense, on the bor- 
ders of that forest-girt lake never before visited 
by the white man, was waged one of the really de- 
cisive battles of American history. From a mil- 
itary standpoint it was an insignificant affair, en- 
gaging scarcely two hundred savage warriors 
and only three Europeans. Two or three mus- 
kets won the victory for the invaders — more by 
the terror which they inspired than by their ex- 
ecution. The blow delivered, the victors prompt- 
ly fled the consequences of their rashness. 

The haughty Iroquois never forgot this humil- 
iation and from that time forward their hostility 
to France and her Indian allies was active and 
all but relentless. As soon as they had them- 
selves obtained firearms from the Dutch traders 
on the Hudson they became formidable adver- 
saries and effectually checked any subsequent at- 
tempts of the French to occupy the country to the 
south of the St. Lawrence. It was many years 
before Champlain and his successors fuUy real- 
ized the commanding position occupied by the 
Iroquois Confederacy (the Five Nations) in 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 15 

northern New York. Their territory comprised 
the Avatershed from which nmnerous streams 
swept northward to the St. Lawrence or the 
Great Lakes ; southward to the deep bays indent- 
ing the Atlantic seaboard; eastward to the tide 
waters of the Hudson ; and westward to the Ohio 
and onward to that ''great water" of the west, 
the Mississippi, which the vague geographical no- 
tions of the day persisted in confounding with 
the Pacific. From this vantage ground the Iro- 
quois exacted obedience or became the devasta- 
ting scourge of all the Indian tribes from the St. 
Lawrence to the Gulf Plains, from the Atlantic 
to the Mississippi. None of these might trade 
with the French, except at their peril. 

The south being thus closed to him and the re- 
gions of the North being uninviting, Champlain's 
further explorations were directed toward the 
West. He followed the Ottawa River to its 
sources ; which, barring a few portages, afford a 
continuous canoe route through Lake Nipissing 
to the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. A sea lay 
before him ; but its waters were fresh, so it was 
called the Mer Douce. That the great South Sea, 
the goal of his ambition, lay just beyond, he little 



16 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

doubted ; nor did Ms followers for two decades to 
come.' 

Then Jean Nicolet, in wilderness-craft a dis- 
ciple of Champlain, was commissioned to explore 
the lands and seas beyond Lake Huron, in the 
confident hope that he would be able to establish 
communication with the Asiatic Orient. As a re- 
sult of his voyage Lake Superior and Lake Mich- 
igan became known. Nicolet also heard, from 
the Indians living on the Fox River above Lake 
Winnebago, in Wisconsin, of a ''great water" 
which could be reached in three days by means 
of a short portage. 

Again this "great water" was understood to 
be some arm of the South Sea. The portage was, 
of course, that from the Fox River to the Wis- 
consin, and it was over this route that the Mis- 
sissippi was actually reached by Joliet and Mar- 
quette forty years later. During this interval, 
however, the northern Algonquin tribes allied 
to the French had been entirely broken up and 

1 A set of the WorJcs of Champlain, in four volumes and in the 
French language, is to be found in the library of The State Historical 
Society of Iowa. Champlain 's observations and descriptions are so 
full and accurate that one can with his journal and a good map follow 
the course of his explorations from day to day. 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 17 

scattered by the revengeful and devastating Iro- 
quois. Their dispirited remnants had fled to the 
remotest shores of the Great Lakes, and thither 
the French fur traders and Jesuit missionaries 
had followed. It was from these far northern 
waters that Joliet and Marquette, La Salle and 
Tonti, and those who came after them descended 
the Mississippi and occupied its basin. 

Such was the far-reaching result of that little 
scrimmage on the beach of Lake Champlain, 
where the Iroquois first felt the maddening sting 
of the white man's bullet. Nor was this the end. 
The stage had only been set for a new scene. But 
let us pause to examine more closely the settings 
of this stage. 

It was La Salle who conceived the scheme of a 
vast French empire in the Mississippi Valley. 
In 1669, four years before the famous voyage of 
Joliet and Marquette, he had left his estates on 
the St. Lawrence and journeyed off to the south- 
west. A temporary lull in the Iroquois hostil- 
ities had made this journey possible. Where he 
went and what he found will probably never be 
accurately known, though all the circumstances 
would indicate that he explored the country to the 



IS EPISODES IX WESTERN HISTORY 

south of Lake Erie and followed the Ohio River 
for a considerable distance." It is certain that he 
did not reach the South Sea and that neither he 
nor others of the French entertained any further 
projects with reference to that chimera. His 
subsequent career can onh^ be explained upon 
the assumption that, either by his own explora- 
tions, or through the reliable testimony of In- 
dians whom he met, he had resolved the mystery 
of the ''Great Water of the West". The Joliet- 
Marquette voyage but confirmed what he already 
understood. He was thus early planning to es- 
tablish a chain of military and trading j^osts, 
sweeping in a vast arch from the St. Lawrence 
round the Great Lakes and do\vn the Mississip- 
pi. Canada, a barren, inhospitable land, ice- 
bound during half the year, w^as the only outlet 
to this wilderness empire. He would establish 
another through the mouth of the Great Eiver, 
whose lower course could as yet only be conjec- 
tured; he would found another New France in 

2Margry's Decouvcrtes et ,Etablisseinents dcs Francais dans 
I'Ouest et dans le Sud I'Amerique Septentrianale contain all that 
is ever likely to be known about this voyage, together with much dis- 
cussion. A complete set of these documents, in seven volumes, is to 
be found in the library of The State Historical Society of Iowa. 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 19 

these lower latitudes and under sunnier skies. 
By means of these two complementary colonies 
and the long line of communication to be main- 
tained between them, the Indian tribes to the 
north and west were to be shielded against fur- 
ther incursions of the Iroquois, thus insuring a 
lucrative and continuous fur trade. The Span- 
iards were to be held in check in the South ; and 
the dominion of France secured throughout the 
whole interior of North America. The English 
were to be confined between the mountains and 
the sea, their coastwise colonies being but a 
string to this long French bow. 

No sooner was this bold enterprise understood 
than La Salle was ''marked up" for misfortune. 
The Canadian fur trader foresaw his annual har- 
vest diverted to other commercial highways ; the 
Jesuit was alarmed at the prospect of losing his 
prestige as rival interests and motives became 
dominant ; the coureurs de hois, those wild forest 
rangers whom the fur trade had brought into ev- 
idence throughout the whole valley, regarded the 
proposed chain of military posts as a menace to 
their lawless freedom. With these elements ar- 
rayed against him, La Salle was pursued to his 



20 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

ruin by jealousy, then to his death by malice. 
But while his unburied bones lay whitening uxDon 
the prairie in southwestern Louisiana, New Or- 
leans was founded and flourished. It not only 
flourished in a substantial way; but, under the 
stimulating influence of John Law, the financier 
of the "Mississippi Bubble", it ''boomed". 
When the bubble burst there were stranded in 
the country many of its victims, noble and other- 
wise, who had no means of leaving and who must 
perforce devote themselves to making an honest 
living. The indigo plant was introduced; also 
the sugar cane. Slaves were imported, and the 
life of the typical southern planter of antebel- 
lum days was fairly inaugurated. Forts, too, 
were built along the long line projected by La 
Salle from Canada to Louisiana. The water 
route from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico by way of the portages at the head of Lake 
Michigan was constantly traversed by fur trad- 
ers, prospectors, colonists, and even tourists. 

The eighteenth century had been "rung in''; 
but during its first half there was little signifi- 
cant change in the Great Valley. In 1721 came 
Charlevoix on a tour of inspection — to visit the 



EPISODES IX WESTERN HISTORY 21 

Jesuit missions throughout New France. He 
must have had an interesting time of it, for he 
has left an interesting account of what he saw.^ 
From this and many other sources we can form 
a pretty good idea of what life was like among 
the French liahitans here in the Mississippi Val- 
ley in those early days. 

Anyone who has journeyed by steamboat down 
the Mississippi may have noticed that the west 
bank of the river rises for the most part abrupt- 
ly in high bluffs ; while to the east the country 
stretches away to a distance of from two to ten 
miles in broad level river bottoms. This sin- 
gular phenomenon is the result of the rotation of 
the earth upon its axis. The same force that de- 
flects the trade winds to the west deflects the 
southward flowing waters of the river toward the 
western margin of its flood plain. One of the 
beautiful alluvial tracts thus left upon the east- 
ern bank, and extending for a distance of sev- 
enty or eighty miles below the mouth of the Mis- 
souri, was long known as the American Bottom. 

Just prior to the opening of the eighteenth 

3 Charlevoix 's History and General Description of New France is 
to be found in the library of The State Historical Society of Iowa. 



22 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

century the Kaskaskias, the Cahokias, and the 
Tamaroas had established themselves here. The 
many conspicuous mounds and the abundant 
flint implements still to be found in this region 
indicate that from prehistoric times it was the 
favorite abode of aboriginal populations. Here, 
too, came the French, in pursuance of the policy 
foreshadowed by La Salle, to establish in this 
central region a colony which should serve as a 
granary for the whole West. The extension of 
the fur trade up the Missouri River and the de- 
velopment of the lead mines of the Meramec, just 
across the Mississippi, determined in a general 
way the location of this first of agricultural com- 
munities in the Middle West. The colonists laid 
out long narrow farms and appropriated ample 
cattle ranges. They planted orchards and vine- 
yards. Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, and Ca- 
hokia became thriving villages. There were 
churches and wine shops, breweries (at least 
one) and blacksmith shops, warehouses, and mar- 
kets. The busy Jiabitans tilled the soil and tend- 
ed their cattle, horses, and sheep ; some built flat 
boats and wagons. They burned brick and earth- 
enware ; tanned leather and wove both sheep and 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 23 

buffalo wool into coarse cloth. They cured furs ; 
made soap and candles and cheese; refined lead 
and zinc; ground flour by water mill and wind 
mill; brewed and baked and churned; attended 
mass ; carried on an active river commerce ; fra- 
ternized with the Indians and taught them the 
arts of peace. All this a thousand miles inland 

— back in the heart of the American wilderness 

— before the English had advanced beyond the 
ebb and flow of the Atlantic tides. 

A quaint and gay people were these pre-pio- 
neers of the Mississippi Valley. They were so- 
ciable creatures, and social lines were not sharply 
drawn among them. Parties were an almost 
nightly affair, with dancing on the rough punch- 
eon floor to the music of the ubiquitous French 
fiddle. Indian maids with French coureurs de 
hois and canoemen, French girls with young In- 
dian chiefs and even the sable sons and daughters 
of Ham — all bounced through the movements 
of the quadrille together, all ''trigged up" in 
gaudy fineries of silk and fur, beads and buck- 
skin, plumes and war paint. Acadia has its 
Evangeline, and we remember reading "Alice of 
Old Vincennes". Kaskaskia is equally entitled 



24 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

to a literary heroine, and the materials for her 
creation are abundant. 

For the protection of these growing colonies 
and their Indian allies there was built Fort Char- 
tres — no rude stockade, like those already de- 
fending the route from Quebec to New Orleans, 
but a solid structure of stone and mortar, esti- 
mated to have cost $1,500,000. It was provided 
with commodious barracks; a deep, dark dun- 
geon-keep that Avas never used; and heavy ord- 
nance that fired only salutes to the wilderness. 
It was garrisoned by regular troops, fully offi- 
cered and properly uniformed, who affected, here 
in this remote corner of the world, something of 
the frivolities of the French capital. 

If we give credit to the descriptions of Charle- 
voix the aborigines here made a nearer approach 
to civilization than they have ever attained under 
the presumably enlightened Indian policy of our 
own government. The work of the Jesuit mis- 
sionaries is cordially extolled. From the first to 
last they strenuously opposed the sale of Liquor 
to the Indians and thus did much to check the 
physical and moral degeneracy which has been, 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 25 

elsewhere, the invariable result of contact with 
the white race. 

Under this mild regime, travel in the country 
to the west of the Wabash was at this period — 
so claims Charlevoix — as safe as along the high- 
ways of France. This may have been true in 
1721, the year that he descended the Mississippi ; 
but there were many years during the eighteenth 
century when it was more than expedient to be- 
ware of the incursions of the Fox and Kickapoo 
tribes dwelling to the west of Lake Michigan. In 
fact the Fox-Wisconsin portage was but occa- 
sionally used. Even the old route of La Salle by 
way of the St. Joseph, Kankakee, and Illinois 
rivers had fallen into disuse. The situation about 
the Great Lakes at this period has been very 
carefully investigated by Dr. Quaife, one of our 
honored guests this evening, and is most inter- 
estingly described in his recent work on Chicago 
and the Old Northwest. A new route was grad- 
ually opened to and from Canada, shorter than 
those by way of the Lake Michigan portages. 
This was the route by the portage from the Mau- 
mee into the Wabash. The canoe of the voyageur 



26 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

glided from the western extremity of Lake Erie 
into the Mamnee where the city of Toledo now 
stands. Up this river, uj^on the site of Fort 
Wayne, Indiana, was Fort Miami; where the 
same voyageur dragged his canoe from the water 
to make the portage to the Wabash. The forest 
road along which he toiled determined, at a later 
date, the course of the Wabash and Erie Canal. 
It conducted him to Fort Ouatinon, situated just 
below the rapids and at the head of practical 
canoe navigation of the Wabash. Once more 
afloat the way was clear of obstruction to the 
mouth of the Mississippi. Vincennes had al- 
ready been established further down the Wabash 
by a company conducted thither by one Father 
Mermet in 1727. We shall have occasion to re- 
fer again to this, the oldest city in the Ohio Val- 
ley. Detroit, founded in the first year of the 
eighteenth century, was the strategic key to all 
of these early westward routes. 

This chain of forts and settlements extending 
from the head of Lake Erie to the Ohio formed 
an impassable barrier to the Iroquois in their 
devastating raids and thus insured the safety of 
both the French and their Indian allies in the 



EPISODES IN WESTEKN HISTORY 27 

farther West. It also served to check the ad- 
vance of English wood rangers to the Mississip- 
pi, and thus secured a complete monopoly of the 
fur trade along its western tributaries — the 
Missouri, the Des Moines, the Iowa, and other 
rivers. 

So far, all was favorable to France. She had 
secured the two main entrances to the interior 
basin of North America, the one by way of the 
St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, the other by 
the mouths of the Mississippi. But there was a 
third route — that by way of the mountain 
passes of the Appalachian system — the impor- 
tance of which the French failed to appreciate 
until it was too late. These valleys conduct to 
the headwaters of the Ohio, which in their west- 
erly course cut the long line of communication 
between Canada and Louisiana at its weakest 
point. 

In the early decades of the eighteenth century 
English traders began to find their way into the 
valley of the Alleghany from Pennsylvania and 
into that of the Monongahela from Virginia. 
Both Pennsylvania and Virginia claimed the 
territory involved and there soon developed a 



28 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

sharp competition which led to bold advances to 
the west along the Ohio and up its principal 
northern branches. Before the middle of the 
century they were carrying their wares to the 
headwaters of the Muskingum, the Scioto, and 
the Miami. Here they began to encounter the 
French who had established their stations at the 
headwaters of the streams flowing northward 
into Lake Erie. Hitherto tliese latter had been 
able to draw to themselves the trade from the 
Ohio over the watershed separating its basin 
from that of the lake, without actually occupy- 
ing the region. 

In other quarters, too, the English were equal- 
ly aggressive. The traders from Virginia and 
the Carolinas, pushing their canoes up Broad 
River, easily passed through a defile of the Blue 
Ridge to the sources of the Tennessee. Others 
found their way through Cumberland Gap to the 
upper reaches of the Cumberland. Thus was the 
territory comprising the States of Kentucky and 
Tennessee over-run by English traders and set- 
tlers, who lost no opportunity to induce the war- 
like Chickasaws to harass the river commerce of 
the French, compelling them to furnish their 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 29 

fleets of canoes and barges with military escort 
in order to insure safe passage to and from New 
Orleans. There is a detailed record of at least 
one strong expedition sent from Fort Chartres 
against these allies of the English, which, fail- 
ing to cooperate with an auxiliary force from 
New Orleans, was destroyed almost to a man. 
Such was the setting of the stage when, in the 
middle of the eighteenth century, the curtain 
rose for another act in the drama of Western 
History. 

The French had now been stirred to activity. 
The Governor of Canada, in the siunmer of 1749, 
sent Celoron de Bienville to reaffirm the French 
sovereignty over the Ohio Valley, long claimed 
on the ground of its exploration by La SaUe. The 
expedition proceeded to the Alleghany by way of 
Niagara and Lake Chautauqua. Here posses- 
sion of the country round about was taken in the 
old pompous feudal manner by burying an in- 
scribed leaden plate with great solemnity at the 
foot of a tree. Other plates were buried at con- 
spicuous points — seven in all. Some of these 
plates have been recovered. The one found at 
Pittsburgh is still legible. It reads (with omis- 



30 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

sions) : "In the year 1749 in the reign of Louis 
XV King of France, Celoron, commandant of 
New France, has buried this plate at the Three 
Rivers this third of August, near the river Oyo, 
otherwise the Fair River, as a monument to the 
possession that we have taken of the said river 
Oyo and of all those that fall into it and of all 
lands on both sides to the sources of said rivers, 
as the preceding kings of France have enjoyed 
or ought to have enjoyed it." By such shallow 
ceremonies did France attempt to warn off the 
stubborn English. Had each of Celoron 's lead- 
en tablets, like the dragon's teeth of classic myth, 
sprung into a fortress the territory must yet 
have passed to the Anglo-Saxon. 

While the French leader was thus tramping 
and trimipeting through the forests of Ohio, 
proclaiming his dog-in-the-manger doctrine, a 
nmnber of influential Virginians, quite uncon- 
scious of his proceedings, were busy with the or- 
ganization of the Ohio Company. The purpose 
was to anticipate the occupation of the district 
included in their grant by settlers from the rival 
Conunonwealth of Pennsylvania, rather than by 
the French. The Washingtons were well repre- 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 31 

sented among those interested in the company. 
Large quantities of goods for the Indian trade 
were imported from London, mmierous settlers 
were engaged, trading posts were established at 
advantageous points, and a fort planned at the 
forks of the Ohio (Pittsburgh). 

Despite the secrecy with which the company 
guarded their movements the French soon 
learned of the enterprise through the Indians 
and proceeded to checkmate it. At Presque Isle, 
on Lake Erie, a fort was erected to serve as a 
military base. At the end of the portage road 
opened to the headwaters of French Creek, a 
tributary of the Alleghany, Fort Le Boeuf was 
established. The line was to be completed by the 
building of Fort Venango at the mouth of 
French Creek ; but, winter being at hand, the site 
was temporarily secured by seizing the block- 
house of one John Frazer, located near by, and 
quartering a garrison there. 

The Virginians were amazed when news of 
these energetic measures was brought to them by 
the evicted Frazer; but, the French might still 
be kept from the Ohio by building a fort at the 
confluence of the Alleghany and the Mononga- 



32 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

hela. It was now mid- winter, however, and this 
could not be undertaken at once. A messenger 
was therefore dispatched to demand of the 
French an explanation of their designs. The per- 
son selected for this delicate and perilous mission 
was George Washington. This was in the winter 
of 1753-4, while he was still in his twenty-first 
year. Washington met the French commandant, 
Legardeur de Saint Pierre, at Fort Le Boeuf. 
Here is what he records of their interview in his 
journal : 

He invited me to sup with them, and treated me with 
the greatest complaisance. The wine, as they dosed them- 
selves pretty plentifully with it, soon banished the restraint 
which at first appeared in their conversation, and gave li- 
cense to their tongues to reveal their sentiment more freely. 
They told me that it was their absolute design to take pos- 
session of the Ohio, and by G — d they would do it ; for that, 
although they were sensible the English could raise two men 
for their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow 
and dilatory to prevent any undertaking of theirs. They 
pretended to have an undoubted right to the river from a 
discovery made by one La Salle, sixty years ago; and the 
rise of this expedition is, to prevent our settling on the 
river or waters of it, as they had heard of some families 
moving out in order thereto. 

The rapid succession of manoeuvres which took 
place during the following spring, which resulted 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 33 

in the military occupation of the forks of the 
Ohio by the French, followed by their advance up 
the Monongahela Yalley and their defeat by 
Washington in the sharp engagement at Great 
Meadows — all this is duly recorded in our text- 
books of history. 

It is a noteworthy fact that in the first battle 
of that eventful war which gave America to the 
English, Washington was in inmiediate command 
and the first gun was fired by his order. As we 
celebrate his birthday tomorrow let us remember 
that long before he became a conspicuous figure 
upon the national stage he rendered faithful ser- 
vice in connection with one of the most decisive 
episodes in Western History. 

The words of Thackeray, quoted from ''The 
Virginians ' ', are peculiarly appropriate tonight : 
"It is strange", he says, ''that in a savage forest 
of Pennsylvania a young Virginian officer should 
fire a shot and waken up a war which was to last 
for sixty years, which was to cover his own coun- 
try and pass into Europe, to cost France her 
American colonies and create the great Western 
Republic, to rage over the Old World after it was 
extinguished in the New, and of all the myriads 



34 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

engaged in the vast contest to leave the prize of 
the greatest fame with hiin who struck the first 
blow" — George Washington. 

The French and Indian War constitutes a de- 
cisive episode in our history, not only because 
it secured the dominion of the Western Hemi- 
sphere to the English people, but for the further 
reason that it united the English colonies into a 
federation founded upon common interest. The 
picture inserted by Franklin in the "Pennsyl- 
vania Gazette", of the disjointed serpent with the 
legend, "Join or die", and afterward the pattern 
for a colonial flag, was a graphic epitome of the 
situation. But, though the colonies, federated in 
spite of their mutual jealousies and dissensions, 
had fought the war to a complete victory and thus 
won for England a domain fairer than any na- 
tion ever before possessed, it soon became evident 
that they themselves were to be denied the fruits 
of that victory — were, in fact, to be merely ex- 
ploited for the enrichment of British merchants 
and manufacturers and the fattening of British 
officials. An edict of his most royal majesty, 
George the Third, forbade settlers access to the 
Ohio Valley ; and, indeed, the colonists might not 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 35 



even trade in that region without royal permis- 
sion. At the same time the stupid arrogance of 
Amherst, the officer in charge of the western 
posts, turned loose upon the frontier the horrors 
of Pontiac's War, without the least adequate de- 
fense against such a contingency having been 
provided. Stamp acts and writs of assistance 
and taxation without representation in general 
afforded the seaboard colonies sufficient ground 
for rebellion — all of which is duly specified in 
the Declaration of Independence. But the trans- 
mountaineers of the Ohio Basin had equally good 
reasons, not clearly set forth in that immortal 
document, for participating in the revolutionary 
struggle on their own account. 

In the interval between the French and Indian 
War and the War for Independence the British 
took but little interest in the West. Garrisons 
were maintained at Niagara, at Detroit, and at 
Mackinac; but these were composed largely of 
French soldiers who had taken the oath of alle- 
giance to England and enlisted as mercenaries. 
At the remoter posts the only tangible evidence 
of the change was displayed from the flag staff, 
upon which the Lions of St. George had displaced 



36 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

the Flem- de Lis. French officers in English uni-' 
forms remained in command of shiftless Creole 
soldiers that knew no word of English. Fort 
Chartres had been abandoned and was already 
being undermined by the waters of the Mississip- 
pi. The cession to Spain of Louisiana, including 
the whole country to the west of the Mississippi, 
had permitted this lax discipline along what must 
otherwise have been a contested frontier. 

At the outbreak of the Revolution the British 
post at Detroit was in charge of Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor Henry Hamilton. It was not the policy of 
the British to withdraw troops from the East 
to protect their western posts when the Indians 
could be easily enlisted in that service. By prom- 
ise of substantial reward Hamilton secured the 
alliance of the Sioux, the Chippewas, and the Me- 
nominees from the Northwest; the Sauks and 
Foxes, the Winnebagoes, and the Potawatomis 
from the country between the Mississippi and 
Lake Michigan. These allies he turned loose up- 
on the Kentucky settlements bej^ond the Ohio, 
people of his own flesh and blood ; while the set- 
tlers to the north of that river, being still for the 
most part French, were as far as possible spared. 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 37 

Those warriors who brought back to Detroit the 
greatest number of scalps were most handsomely 
rewarded. It is little wonder that Hamilton be- 
came known to the frontiersmen as "the hair- 
buying general". 

The Kentucky settlers thus attacked were most- 
ly Virginians by birth and naturally turned to 
that Commonwealth for assistance. Among 
those who had most staunchly defended the Ohio 
frontier and covered the retreat of the less reso- 
lute settlers to their old homes across the Alle- 
ghanies was George Rogers Clark. He was 
from a good old Virginia family, had early be- 
come a backwoods surveyor — like Washington 
— and was a man to win the respect and confi- 
dence of those bold pioneers with whom he had 
cast his lot. In his many excursions into the 
country bordering upon the Ohio he had learned 
much of the state of affairs among the French 
villages, now nominally under British control. 
What he knew, and what he learned from woods- 
men whom he sent to make further observations, 
convinced him that the time was ripe for carry- 
ing the war into the enemy's countr}^ 

With this purpose in mind Clark set out for 



38 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

Virginia to confer with Governor Patrick Henr3\ 
His project found instant favor with that sturdy 
old patriot and he Avas given every possible aid 
toward its execution. The jealousy of Pennsyl- 
vania, which was still acute, rendered it necessary 
to proceed siih rosa. Two letters of instruction 
were therefore issued by the astute Henry — one 
directly to the purpose, for Clark's own guidance, 
the other for "public consumption". These two 
letters, placed side by side as they lie before me, 
make interesting reading. Clark's ultimate ob- 
ject was the capture of Detroit. Before this 
could be undertaken, however, the British posts 
to the north of the Ohio and along the Mississippi 
must be seized and, if possible, their Creole gar- 
risons won over to the American cause. 

It would take a volume to describe adequately 
the campaign in which this was accomplished and 
I shall not attempt it here. Those of you who 
have read Mr. John Carl Parish's account of the 
enterprises of La Salle and Tonti, in The 31 an 
with the Iron Hand, will be glad to know that he 
contemplates the preparation of a volume on the 
campaign of George Rogers Clark for the same 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 39 

series of True Tales of the Great Valley, edited 
by the Superintendent of this Society. 

We can not tell in detail how, with his little 
troop of buckskin-clad and coon-skin-capped 
riflemen, Clark descended the Ohio to Fort Mas- 
sac, a fort near its mouth established by the 
French as they withdrew from Fort Duquesne ; 
how they stole across ''Little Egypt" to Kas- 
kaskia, surprised and took possession of that vil- 
lage without striking a blow, won over the popu- 
lation of the whole American Bottom to the cause 
of the Republic, and recruited from this popula- 
tion men to take the place of those whose enthu- 
siasm and term of enlistment had expired simul- 
taneously ; how he marched thence to Vincennes 
in mid- winter — in the month of February it 
was, in the year 1779 — marched for twelve days 
through the "drowned lands" of the Wabash, 
over miles of country three feet under water, 
upon which the ice must needs be broken with 
their rifle butts as they advanced; how, mean- 
time, the "hair-buying general" with a British 
garrison had advanced from Detroit and taken 
possession of Vincennes; how Clark's soldiers, 



40 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

famished and desperate as wolves, compelled the 
surrender of the ** hair-buyer", who even then 
had Indian war parties out hunting American 
scalps ; nor how he finally ''packed" his prisoners 
off to Virginia while he organized his conquest 
for further defense, and offense as well. The 
annals of war record the details of no campaign 
more remarkable than this. In a private letter 
to Governor Mason, Patrick Henry's successor, 
Clark begs hmi not to give out the details of their 
experiences, as those ignorant of the conditions 
which they encountered would disbelieve his 
statements. 

The Revolution dragged wearily on to its end 
with no further incident of note in the West. 
The projected expedition against Detroit never 
materialized, much to Clark's disappointment; 
but it mattered not. The Governor of that post 
and a large part of its garrison had been captured 
at Vincennes. When hostilities had ceased and 
when, before the peace commissioners assembled 
in Paris, Benjamin Franldin contended for the 
American possession of the West, his argmnents 
were powerfully reinforced by the fact that 
American supremacy was already assured in that 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 41 

region and that Ho peace could be permanent 
without its recognition. All this we owe to 
George Rogers Clark. The capture of Vincennes 
had in the West an effect, both actual and moral, 
similar to that produced in the East by the sur- 
render of Burgoyne at Saratoga. His campaign 
is surely entitled to rank as one of the really de- 
cisive episodes in Western History, and his title 
to a place in the American '^hall of fame" is be- 
yond dispute. 

And now the great clock by which historians 
mark the lapse of time tolls nineteen. The young 
republic is making substantial progress, but with 
halting steps. Its affairs are still involved in 
the maze of European politics. France is again 
in possession of Louisiana and even cherishes the 
hope of recovering all that she had lost this side 
the sea through Bourbon incompetency. But 
the conciliatory policy adopted by Napoleon with 
reference to the United States forestalled any 
attempt to realize the hope. Jealous lest Eng- 
land should at last secure the prize, the value of 
which was now apparent to far-sighted men, 
Louisiana was ** knocked down" to the United 
States at the bargain price of $15,000,000. New 



42 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

England statesmen, of course, opposed the 
"deal"; but Thomas Jefferson, the "author of 
the Declaration of Independence, and of the 
Statute of Religious Liberty, and f oimder of the 
University of Virginia", carried his point and 
Uncle Sam took possession of an unimproved 
ranch equal in extent to all western Europe. 
Again was the responsible leader in one of the 
most decisive episodes of Western History a Vir- 
ginian. 

News traveled but slowly, by sailing ship and 
canoe, in the early days of the nineteenth century 
and it was the ninth of March, 1804, before the 
Spanish grandees at St. Louis hauled down their 
flag and, midst the huzzas of the Creole popula- 
tion, courteously hoisted the tri-color of France. 
The very next day this was lowered to make way 
f 01- the stars and stripes — there were but seven- 
teen stars then — and the people of the great 
West never since have been called upon to change 
their allegiance. Just across the river from St. 
Louis was a strange busy camp. Here were as- 
sembled, awaiting the formal transfer of Louis- 
iana, the little party of soldiers, voyageurs, and 
frontiersmen, forty-two in all, under the joint 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 43 

command of Meriwether Lewis and William 
Clark, who were to carry this same flag to the far 
sources of the Missouri, then down the western 
mountain slopes to the Columbia and along that 
stream — ''the Oregon, which hears no sound, 
save his own dashings" — to the Pacific. 

I shall not detain you with the details of this 
expedition. There are several here this evening 
who will recall the most interesting account of it 
given by Mr. Rich, one of the Curators of this 
Society, at a meeting of the Political Science Club 
several years ago. Council Bluffs and Floyd's 
Bluff will suggest incidents of the earlier stage 
of its progress familiar to us as lowans. 

Two and one-half years passed by with no tid- 
ings from the explorers. They had been given 
up as lost ; when on the twenty-third of Septem- 
ber, 1806, thirty ragged, bronzed, and weather- 
beaten voyageiirs steered their canoes up to the 
water front of St. Louis. People were surpris- 
ed; but presently someone recognized who they 
were and cheers gave evidence of their welcome. 
These were the last of the great pathfinders of 
the American continent. 

To the enterprise of Virginians we owe, not 



44 EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 

only the consummation of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase itself, but also the ''follow up" movement 
initiated by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 
which finally made us secure in its possession; 
for these men, too, were Virginians. Captain 
William Clark was, in fact, a younger brother 
of George Rogers Clark, and Meriwether Lewis 
had been President Jefferson's secretary. 

The nineteenth century is studded with events 
significant in connection with the development of 
the West. The century itself is one vast episode, 
emerging from the level of preceding times like 
the basic plateau of some mountain range, and 
precluding a just appreciation of the relief in 
which its great events actualh^ stand. 

The time allowed me will not permit of further 
specification. But as I write these words there 
looms up in the shadow beyond my lamp the 
figure of a man — tall, angular, and uncouth; 
yet strong, and with an expression of kindliness 
and tenderness such as can be depicted upon the 
face of no man who has not suffered. I need not 
tell you what Abraham Lincoln did for America. 
He will continue to be known in historv as the 



EPISODES IN WESTERN HISTORY 45 

savior of the nation which Washington founded, 
and we are proud that he came out of the West. 
But let us, while paying due honors to those 
whose enterprise and foresight brought the West 
within the bounds of the American Republic, 
while treasuring the memory of those heroes who 
grappled here with the primordial wilderness, 
and while cultivating that provincialism which 
is necessary to a just and proper pride in our 
western institutions — let us, with all this, keep 
ever before us that ideal for which our Lincoln 
gave himself, even as a living sacrifice: "No 
East, no West ; no South, no North ; but one coun- 
try". 



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